Video Editing Software: Beyond the Basics

Got a bunch of video clips from that camcorder, Sony Bloggie, or digital camera and want to do more with it than introductory-level apps can handle? Check out these enthusiast-level video editing apps.

Maybe you're sick of showing your un-edited video to friends and family, complete with jerky pans, out of focus moments, long periods of no action, and awkward actions or remarks. And maybe you want to go beyond simply cutting and joining these clips, as you can do in Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 or Apple iMovie '11. Both are great intro-level apps, but what if you want to go further, but not far enough to pay for pro level tools like Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, Apple's Final Cut Studio, or Sony Vegas Pro 10? Help is here, in the form of near-professional-yet-still-usable video editing software. These apps let you perform feats such as multiple picture-in-picture, chroma keying (i.e., green screen effects), and precise editing down to the individual frame, all wrapped up in a DVD presentation complete with menus.

Editing
All of the applications here let you insert multiple video tracks for montage effects like overlays or picture-in-picture. PowerDirector and Premiere Elements allow up to 100 simultaneous tracks, while Sony Vegas Movie Studio limits you to 10. All the programs offer a wealth of transitions for joining clips artisticallyfades, dissolves, 3D cube spinning, reveals, and more. Most of these products let you do keyframe editing, in which you tell the app the exact frame you want an effect or animation to start and end with.

Special Effects
A couple of the cooler things they can do are picture-in-picture and chroma key. The first can include more than just a single small window inside the other one, but can include as many movie images within the frame as you have tracks. PowerDirector and Nero have particularly helpful tools for creating PiP effects. Chroma key lets you show a person you've shot in front of a green screen or blue screen on top of a different background. The apps had varying levels of success with this technique, but PowerDirector and Premiere Elements excelled. Other nifty effects include cropping and zooming video, speeding it up, slowing it down, and even reversing it.

Burning and Sharing
Once you're done editing your movie, most of these apps will let you not only save it to any PC or portable-device-readable file format, but also burn it to a DVD or Blu-ray disc complete with your own menus and title theme or upload it directly to YouTube, Facebook , or another online sharing site. If you don't have a Blu-ray burner, most can use the AVCHD format to burn to a DVD that will play as high-definition in your Blu-ray player. Unfortunately, none of the apps I tested could directly send your creation directly to Paramount or Viacom! Wondering what resolution and size settings to use? See our piece Video Editing: A Guide to Output for information that can help you choose.

Pricing
The software capable of all this ranges in price from 70 bucks for Nero Video Premium HD to 130 for Adobe Premiere Elements Plus. Some products, like PowerDirector and Premiere Elements, include the ability to author menus for and burn Blu-ray HD discs, while others like Pinnacle Studio make you pay for a plug-in to add this capability. Pro level video-editing software usually costs over $500, so considering what these enthusiast apps let you do they're a bargain. And the result you get when you create a video that wows is priceless.

Click the links below to read the full reviews. Note that we'll be adding more reviews to this roundup as time goes on and more apps are released and reviewed. One noteworthy omission is Pinnacle Studio, which hasn't released a completely new version lately. When the new version is released, we'll review it. In the meanwhile, you can read the old review of Pinnacle Studio 14 Ultimate, but note that the score doesn't compare to the current crop of reviewsit was given in comparison to last year's apps.

Adobe Premiere Elements 9
$99.99
Premiere Elements includes lots of help for beginners a super slick interface and tons of effects and transitions. With its support for up to 100 simultaneous video and audio tracks, keyframing, chroma keying, picture in picture, and audio editing, you'll be hard pressed to find something it can't do to your digital movie. Add to this impressive auto-tagging of video containing people and characteristicsthe only app in the group that does this. But its interface and movie rendering are slower than competitors', and its annoying Welcome screen delays you at each start up.

CyberLink PowerDirector 9
$99.95
PowerDirector offers the best response and rendering speed of consumer video editing software we've tested. The app includes nearly every video effect and output option you could ask for. And this latest version also adds a capable sound editor.

Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD 10
$99.95
While Vegas Movie Studio offers lots of precise control, it comes with a steeper learning curve than consumer video editing software competitors like PowerDirector or Premiere Elements. It's a product that's clearly been brought down from its pro-level progenitor, rather than being built for consumers from the ground up. Its rendering speed was the slowest of the lot, but it offered the most effects.